Chasing the Devil's Tail (31 page)

"I stopped by to ask after Father Dupre," Valentin said.

The parish clerk made a show of pursing his lips with officious puzzlement. "You're inquiring on behalf of Mr. Anderson?" Rice said.

So it was going to be a fencing match. "Mr. Anderson will be pleased to learn any news about the Father's health," Valentin said as a parry, wondering if John Rice knew of his dismissal and would call him on it.

Perhaps not. The parish clerk patted his already neat hair and said, "Father Dupre is doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances. The staff at Jackson is taking excellent care of him." He took off his glasses, held the lenses in front of his face, and replaced them. His gaze wandered to the letter on his desk.

"Was the exact nature of Father's illness ever discovered?" Valentin inquired in a tone that was casual but concerned.

Rice considered, then said, with deliberation, "You may tell Mr. Anderson that the Father is in the best of hands. There's been some improvement, but these cases are very difficult." He produced a small, stiff smile. "Of course, we would all be most grateful if Mr. Anderson remembers Father Dupre in his prayers." He entwined his fingers and waited.

Valentin nodded briefly and made his exit. The parish clerk stared at the closed door, then reached directly for the walnut box on his desk that housed the telephone.

He walked out of the Quarter and into Storyville as darkness descended. He felt like he should be looking for something among the passing faces; or maybe there would be something, some key, lying on the banquette or floating in the humid air, and all he would have to do was see it and snatch it away.

He stopped when he reached the corner of Canal and
Basin streets and looked back down-the-line. The piece to the puzzle had not appeared, maybe because everything he needed had been there for the taking all along. Maybe it was true that Buddy Bolden was the murderer of five innocent women. Maybe it was just that simple, and just that sad.

It was almost eight o'clock when he finally reached Rampart Street. The Longshoreman's Hall was lit up with electric lights strung all across the facade, casting a weak amber glow over the crowd at the front door, a raucous mob of sports and girls from the houses, gangs of college boys, out-of-town drummers in twos and threes, plus the usual assortment of sports, gamblers and local ne'er-do-wells. Above their chatter, the sound of a band jassing noisily came bubbling out the open doors of the building.

He stepped around the crowd and peered in through one of the tall windows. It was the King Bolden Band, all right, just like the signs next to the doors announced. But it was no surprise that there was no King Bolden on the stage, or that there was another horn player in his place. He could guess what it meant, and the only true surprise was it hadn't happened sooner.

He moved away from the window and into the street, watching for the familiar profile to come into view. Inside, the band wound down and the music stopped in a swell of applause and cheers. A few minutes later, Jeff Mumford and Jimmy Johnson stepped through the doors and found a place at the corner of the building to get a breath of air. Mumford, flexing his fingers, caught sight of the Creole detective and quickly averted his eyes. He worked his fingers for another half-minute, then straightened and walked over to where Valentin was standing.

The guitar player looked sheepish as he nodded a greeting. "You looking for Buddy?" Valentin nodded. "I might as well tell you. Willie said we're done with him."

"Does he know?" Valentin said.

The guitar player shook his head, looking genuinely regretful. "Nossir, I don't believe so. We just couldn't put up with it no more. Buddy, he's just ... he's..." Mumford made a futile gesture, then gave Valentin an earnest look. "Can you tell him, Mr. St. Cyr? It'd be better that way." He offered his hand and then walked back to join Johnson. The two musicians went inside. Presently the band started up with "Sugaree."

If there was a night for Buddy to miss a show, this was it, but not five minutes later, Valentin saw the lank profile wavering out of the darkness up Rampart Street. Bolden reeled around the corner at Dryades and stopped dead in his tracks, his face breaking into a grin of delight as he took in the crowd milling on the banquette and spilling out into the cobbled street. Then he saw Valentin approaching him and let out a little laugh of surprise.

"Well, what the hell!" he said. "What are you doin' down here?"

Valentin blocked his path. "I want to talk to you."

Buddy waved his horn in the air. "Yeah, that's fine, but not now. I got to get inside, make some music for these folk."

Valentin held out both his hands. "Just hold up for a minute."

Buddy was about to brush by when the doors to the dance hall opened and the sound of a cornet came chattering out, carried along on a gurgling stream of rhythm. His head swung around and he frowned. "What the hell is that?" he said. "Who's playin' that horn?"

***

Longshoreman's Hall was a box of a building with a huge, open dance floor of rough pine flooring, ringed on three sides by a balcony that was crowded with tables. Beneath the balcony were more tables and, top and bottom, they were all packed with revelers. The two bars, one on each side of the door, were three deep with men shouting and grabbing for beer, champagne, and short glasses of Raleigh Rye. The floor was a bobbing pool of dancing couples, all sweated-up in the close air. On the stage, sounding loud and perky, was the Bolden Band: the regular fellows, minus Bolden, but plus another, a short brown man in a slouch hat, playing a golden cornet.

Buddy moved stiffly through the crowd of jigging bodies, getting jostled by elbows and shoulders and hips. It was dark, and nobody seemed to notice that it was King Bolden passing by. No one saw, and no one called his name. Valentin had followed him inside, but now he hung back, not wanting to witness what was about to happen.

Buddy, peering at the stage, saw the rotund man with the horn: Freddie Keppard, the only horn player in New Orleans that was in his class. Buddy pushed through the front line of the dancers, his cornet jiggling in his hand, trying to hold his smile.

As the tune wound down, Willie Cornish looked over the bell of his trombone and damn, if it wasn't Bolden coming through the crowd. In another second, Mumford saw him and so did the others, Freddie, too, and they all started looking off somewhere, as if the notes to the next number were written on the flaking wall paint.

The song ended and the fellows went to fiddling with their instruments. Buddy understood: they were making time for him to get up there, to tell Freddie thanks for sitting in, but King Bolden was here now, and ready to make some noise.

Willie watched him edge closer to the bandstand, waiting for an invitation. He turned away, blew the spit out of his horn, trying to get out of it. He felt the others watching out of the corners of their eyes and Keppard faded back, not wanting to get in the middle of something. Willie turned around as Bolden moved closer. The dance floor was clearing and finally some of the people noticed and started pointing and whispering.
Look, that's King Bolden there...

Buddy looked up at Willie Cornish and made a move to step on stage and get going. But Cornish held up a big hand, pink palm out, and said, "Wait a minute, now." Buddy stopped. There was movement behind him, and more whispers.

Cornish couldn't think of how else to put it, so he muttered brusquely, "Look here, we hired Freddie." Buddy gave him a blank stare, so Cornish leaned down closer to his face and closer to his ear. "We don't need you no more, Buddy," he said in his low, gravelly voice. Buddy still didn't seem to understand, so he said, loud enough for the fellows on the stage and the dancers standing closest to hear, "You're out of it, y'understand? We can't be workin' with the likes of you. It's done. There ain't no Bolden Band no more."

He straightened quickly, took a half-step back, waiting for Bolden to go wild and start tearing the place apart, but Buddy just stared blankly, like he hadn't heard a word. The trombone player shrugged his big shoulders and turned away.

Buddy stood there, looking from one face to the next, his mouth working up and down. But they wouldn't return his stare, wouldn't pay him any attention at all. Cornish whipped an angry hand up to lead them into a slow-drag blues.

No one cared to dance. Most eyes in the room fell on Buddy, standing alone and very still in the middle of the dance floor. The song wound on, a deep, liquid-blue haze, and he brought the cornet to his lips at one point and a murmur like
a small breeze passed through the crowd. But then he dropped it to his side and let it dangle. Voices were whispering now and the news went through the house in bare seconds. Not a few of these same people had been around when Kid Bolden first got up and started making people all crazy with his music, and now the last scene in the drama was being played out before their eyes.

Cornish waved his hand to bring the blues down short and stole a glance at Buddy, standing there like an empty sack. The room was still, like somebody had just been shot. Cornish shook his head, then turned around and counted out one-two-three, one-two-three, to start up "Goldenrod Rag."

At the fourth bar, a couple moved onto the dance floor, and then there was another, and then a dozen, and then it seemed the whole house descended, arms flailing gaily and feet stomping all merry on the rough boards. For a minute or so, they moved around Buddy in little eddies. Here and there, a reveler reeled by and gave a knowing glance,
That's right, that's King Bolden.
The band chugged along and it was Keppard up there now, and if it wasn't Buddy's soaring, staccato brass, he was tight and plenty loud.

They played on and Buddy seemed to grow smaller, shrinking away, until no one noticed him much at all. So that only a few people looked around when the light-skinned fellow slipped through the crowd, took his arm and led him away.

Buddy had taken only a few stumbling steps down the banquette when the cornet dropped from his hand and clattered into the gutter. Valentin saw it fall and called his name, but Buddy walked stiffly down Rampart toward Dryades, never once looking back.

Valentin stopped to pick up the horn. There was a fresh dent in the brass to join all the old dirty ones. King Bolden
had once preened the perfect silver curves, the silent sliding valves with their mother-of-pearl buttons, so the deep glow of polished brass reflected his strange circus world. And over the horizon of the bell, he could see all the tan and brown and black faces looking up at him. It was the very horn that had blasted New Orleans out of its slumber and set a whole city to jassing. But now it seemed lifeless, all dull gray and scratched and dinged, a forlorn and forgotten piece of metal, something for the junkman's horse-drawn wagon. Valentin thought to lay it down and let it be, but then he stuck it under his arm and followed Buddy into the night.

They walked along the railroad tracks that ran through the yard behind Union Station. The night wind kicked up whorls of dust and gravel, and in the distance off to their left, Storyville rose like a vaudeville stage, all tawdry light, herky-jerky motion and tinny noise.

Buddy came upon a club car that had been pushed off on a siding and sat down heavily on the bottom step. He leaned back, gripped the railing and closed his eyes for a moment. He looked up when he heard Valentin come along and right away saw the horn. "Whatchu doin' with that?" he muttered tonelessly.

"You dropped it," Valentin said and held it out to him.

Buddy turned his head away. "I don't want the goddamn thing."

"You dropped it on the street," Valentin repeated. "In the gutter back there on Ramp—"

"Y'hear me?" Buddy yelled suddenly. "I said I don't
want
the goddamn thing!"

Valentin shrugged and tossed the horn on the second step. Buddy winced at the sound of brass clanking on steel. "Why
dontcha just keep it?" His mouth twisted into a ghastly smile. "You ain't heard? Ain't no King Bolden Band no more."

"I heard," Valentin said. He watched Buddy's face, saw the awful, broken look, and tried to think of something else to say.

"And after what I done for them!" Bolden cried out. "They wouldn't one of them be nothin' if it wasn't for me. Willie Cornish, that fat fuck of a black-ass nigger, tellin' me there ain't no Bolden Band. Mumford acting like I ain't even there, and his own mama was a whore down—"

"I don't want to hear that," Valentin cut in.

Bolden stopped and gave him a hard look. "You see what they did? You see what they did to me?"

"I saw," Valentin said.

"Well, who the fuck's Willie Cornish to tell—"

"What do you care?" Valentin said. He suddenly felt very tired of all of it.

Buddy's bloodshot eyes fixed on him. "What's that?"

"I said, what do you care?" He waved a hand back the way they'd come. "You don't give a goddamn about that band."

"Whatchu talkin' about?" Bolden said. "I started—"

"You don't!" Valentin cut him off again. "And you don't care about Nora or the baby, either."

"Don't you—"

"You don't give a good goddamn for anything, except getting drunk or smoking hop or chasing after some whore. Just whatever the hell pleases you. Ain't that right?"

Buddy stared at him, then let out a dull laugh. "You don't know nothin'," he said roughly.

"I know I'm about the only friend you got left!"

"You ain't no friend of mine," Buddy said in a low, mean voice.

Valentin felt a hot flush rising to his face. "Oh, no? Who
do you think's been protecting you? Who you think kept the coppers from taking you down all this time?"

Buddy frowned in annoyance. "Whatchu talkin' about? Taking me down for what?"

"For those goddamn murders in Storyville!" Speaking the words made his stomach churn.

Buddy's mouth fell open. "What'd you say?"

Valentin let out a blunt, exasperated laugh. "That's right! You get it? The coppers and just about everybody else back-of-town think it was you murdered Annie. And Gran Tillman and Martha—"